


An A to Z study of Leamas and Fiedler’s relationship

by VesperNexus



Category: The Spy Who Came in from the Cold - John Le Carré
Genre: Angst, Fluff, Friendship, Gen, M/M, One shots/ drabbles, Slow Build
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-29
Updated: 2019-02-14
Packaged: 2019-05-30 08:20:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 17,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15092858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VesperNexus/pseuds/VesperNexus
Summary: An alphabetical progression of Leamas and Fiedler’s relationship.It starts slowly, and in the middle, and then happens all at once. As all the best things do.





	1. A is for ad hominem

**Author's Note:**

> idk

_Meaning: to the man_

 

Fiedler was frustrated. Leamas could see it the impatience seep from the curl of his thin fingers around the pen, all the way to the tight press of his lips.

“Not playing nice?”

The younger man leaned back into the wooden chair, arching his back like a feline. He stretched his thin arms above his head, the slender lines of his torso acute beneath his white shirt. From here, Leamas could make out all the jutting steps in the stairway of his ribs. He did not divert his gaze.

“No Mister Leamas,” Fiedler’s voice was tired. Leamas raised an eyebrow. “They are not, as you say, _playing nice._ ”

Fiedler’s dark eyes drifted the other side of the room, taking in the cross of Leamas’ legs on the worn couch and the heavy tumbler in his hand.

“Tell me about it.”

Fiedler lowered his arms. A slightest twitch of his lips.

“I am attempting to circulate a report throughout Upper Section Five,” he diverted his gaze to the stacks of paper neatly filed on the small desk. Leamas took a sip of Steinhager. “I require the consent of one of Mundt’s _yes-men._ ”

Leamas huffed, uncrossing his legs. “How’s that working out for you?”

Fiedler seemed to have missed his sarcasm, brows furrowing at his report again. Leamas let himself admire from afar, the way even the dingy lighting of the cabin seemed to cast his face in a thousand fluid shadows, splintering those delicate features in grey and white.

“Not very well, I am afraid.”

He wondered what drove him to flatten his bare feet on the cold floorboards and stand. Leamas glanced at the near-empty glass in his hand and resolved to blame it on the drink. Fiedler kept writing and did not look up as he pulled out the rickety chair opposite his own.

“He has withheld his consent,” Fiedler went on, although Leamas had not asked. Nonetheless, he drained the remaining gin and let the tumbler _thud_ quietly on the wooden desk. Those dark eyes only flickered up once in annoyance, and Leamas drew a coaster under the glass with a roll of his eyes. _Lest it leave a stain, Mister Leamas._ Fiedler went on, satisfied. “He is entitled to, of course, however,” a sigh, “his consent must not be _unreasonably withheld._ ”

“What’s that mean?” Leamas perched his elbows on the desk, crinkling the corner of Fiedler’s report. Thin fingers tugged the papers from beneath. He hid his smile.

Fiedler put his pen down again. Their knees brushed beneath the small desk but the German did not seem to mind the intrusion. Rather, the tight string holding all his pieces together seemed to loosen, so the sharp bend of his joints became a little more lax.

“It means, Mister Leamas, that he must have a valid reason for doing so. It must not be in itself undue, manifestly absurd, or unconscionable.”

Leamas let the smooth voice wash over him. The subject matter was unspectacular, and the tone inched on boredom. But there was something about the ease and slowness with which Fiedler spoke, the careful roll of his tongue over every word which made you almost inclined to listen. Fiedler might have been reading a shopping list and you would have been sitting rapt. He might do well to tell Fiedler he had such a manipulative voice.

By this point, Leamas was almost immune. He blinked and refocused. “I’m guessing his reason’s got to do with the last one.”

Fiedler did not seem to mind his lazy expression. His eyes gently came back to Leamas. “He says I am not to be trusted.”

There was something in that lilt. “In so many words?”

“Not quite,” something dangerously close to uncertainty fogged up the corners of Fiedler’s eyes. Or maybe that was the gin. “It is inferred. He has…” the pause was not uncomfortable. Fiedler did not make a pause uncomfortable unless he intended to do so. “…Alluded to particular aspects about my background.”

Something cold struck him between the ribs. “Oh.”

A fleeting smile. Was it genuine? It didn’t matter. “Yes. Oh.”

“He’s a bit of a dick then?”

Fiedler laughed. It was sudden and quiet, but it was warm, and it sucked from Leamas’ throat an amused huff.

“In so many words.”

Leamas smiled. It was almost unconscious. He watched Fiedler’s eyes flicker to his cheek for the quickest moment. He filed it away for later.

“What’ll you do?”

“I will rebut his excuse, and it will be overturned, naturally. I know he must know this. It is simply a ploy to delay the inevitable. A successful one nonetheless.”

 _The inevitable._ Leamas could feel the weight gaining on his shoulders with those words. He cleared the sudden dryness in his throat. “What’re you going to argue, then?”

“That his reasoning is based ad hominem.”

“I dropped Latin in high school.”

Fiedler shook his head as if to say _Oh, Mister Leamas._ It would have been in a fond tone, Leamas could convince himself. “It means against one’s character. It means-”

Leamas blinked. The words came quickly, and they made Fiedler laugh again. “This information is irrelevant not because it’s irrelevant, but because you’ve said it. Because _of course_ you’d argue this in this way, you’re too young and inexperienced to know otherwise. Besides, you’re a Jew.”

“Yes,” there was a strange twist of delight in his lovely voice. “Precisely.”

Leamas stood up, taking his tumbler with him.

He turned to the half bottle of Steinhager balanced precariously on a shelf and twisted the lid off. His back was to Fiedler and he knew those dark eyes looked nowhere else.

The gin sloshed keenly up the glass sides. Leamas proudly noted his hands had stopped shaking.

Perhaps it was the drink, or the eerie calmness augured by Fiedler’s frighteningly captivating voice. “It’s sad to see that’s how creative they’ll get. Attacking your character. Maybe if they took a moment to look at you, _really look_ , bloody hell…”

His words twirled lazily in the uncharted space between them, prompting no response. Leamas did not have to turn around to see the warmth in Fiedler’s stare, or the way the lines around his eyes softened ever so slighting in an invisible smile.

 _Ad hominem indeed,_ he thought with an invisible smile of his own.


	2. B is for bona fide

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Meaning: in good faith; without intention to deceive.

_Meaning: in good faith; without intention to deceive._

 

Leamas felt warm.

It was an odd sensation that tingled his toes right up to his knees, almost like numbness. It was strange to feel warm behind the curtain. The wooden bench was hard underneath his legs and it promised to renew the creaking of his shoulders.

He pressed a gloved hand to his forehead, pushing a stray lock from his eyes. he’d need a haircut soon. He spared a quick glance at his companion, a still figure similarly pressed into the uncomfortable seat. Fiedler had good hair. It always looked soft, like someone had affectionately ruffled it. Maybe he’d ask him.

“Something on your mind, Mister Leamas?” Fiedler kept his eyes narrowed on the ducks swimming about in the lake, face white and expressionless.

“Your summer is almost as bad as your food.”

From the corner of his eye, he watched Fiedler’s eyebrows press together delicately as if in serious contemplation. He pursed his lips. Leamas wondered how old he was.

“Our food is not bad,” he replied, almost affronted. His voice was low. “We have schnitzel.”

Leamas snorted. “I spent near half my life in this damn place. Haven’t had a good schnitzel once.”

Fiedler finally looked up at him. “You have not tried my cooking.”

The determination platforming those very strange words was not lost on Leamas. His eyebrow climbed slowly to his forehead. “You’d cook for me?”

“You seem determined to insult our food without cause, Mister Leamas. Of course I would.” A more light-hearted lilt, “If only to prove you wrong.”

He refocused on the ducks. Leamas kept staring _. What would George think of me now?_ Watching ducks nibble remains of dry bread in a lake so clear he did not need to squint to see the bottom. Watching with Jens Fiedler in a companionable silence, knees and shoulders pressed together like schoolchildren partnered on a field trip. _He’d be proud._

Fiedler was an oddity. It took Leamas a long while to reconcile those thin arms being strong enough to carry a knife, let alone being able to bury it deep in one of Guillam’s men.

 _The Devil himself,_ Peter had been muttering angrily, all those months ago, shrouded in the dark. But Fiedler’s face made a nice outline against the grass, a black silhouette of carefully stencilled straight lines.

“Enjoying the view?” That destructive sarcasm George had warned him about. Leamas forced himself to look away, but his mouth upturned in an exaggerated smile that crinkled the lines at the corners of his eyes.

Fiedler’s lower lip twitched. It was enough.

“You are a strange man, Mister Leamas.” Fiedler twisted, dipping one pale hand into his coat. He pulled out a plastic package that crinkled loudly in the soft wind. It was already open.

He held it up to Leamas. Leamas nodded a _thanks,_ palming a handful of dried bread for the ducks. He flicked the crumbs onto the water with a smooth twist of his wrist, and watched the birds flock together quickly and nibble wetly at the food. Fiedler did the same, slower.

“What makes me so strange? I thought I was an open book to you.”

The younger man paused. The crumbs were still fisted gently in one of his hands. Those fingers must have been stiff. Although, Leamas reconciled, it did not take German weather to turn those hands cold.

The silence settled, disturbed only by the wind.

“I thought so too.”

_What?_

Fiedler threw the crumbs and continued as if nothing had happened. Leamas only remembered to do the same when the sweat slicking his palms made the bread damp.

*

In spite of his complaining, Leamas really did enjoy the weather. Although someone had plastered the sun on the blue plane for light alone, the cold didn’t bother him.

Sure, it broke right through his thick coat and tickled his ribs, bringing alive Goosebumps along his arms. But the strange warmth from earlier hadn’t yet disappeared, and Leamas figured it must have been the exhaustion.

Fiedler walked ahead of him, hands buried in his own coat. Although native, the cold seemed to strike him more aggressively than Leamas. He was careful not to let it show. Part of Leamas itched to throw another layer over those slender shoulders.

He cleared his throat. _To hell with it_. “What did you mean?”  

Fiedler twisted to look at him, pausing in his stride. His boots began to sink into the mulch. Leamas caught up to him with long strides.

“What did you mean?” He repeated when the other man didn’t respond, the words bouncing off tree trunks and riding up the bark. No one else would hear them here.

“You must be more specific Mister Leamas.” Fiedler continued on, slower, so they were walking side by side. In that moment, a thought came to him. Fiedler was less physically imposing, sure. But his height and slight figure made him quick and agile, and mapped behind those dark eyes must have been the entrance and exit and every trail in the entire forest. “Mister Leamas?”

“Earlier. You said you didn’t know me like you thought you would.”

Fiedler blinked up at him, almost owlishly. He knew exactly what Leamas was talking about.

 _Make them hate you,_ Control had told him. _It’ll make them treasure what they get out of you._

 _Make him care, Alec,_ George had told him. _It’ll make him treasure what he gets out of you. Basic human empathy, a bona fide relationship forged in good faith. Even Fiedler must be capable of that._

Bona fide meant a relationship without deception. _What did you mean, George?_

“I could have gone one of two ways with your interrogation Mister Leamas.” Brown leaves crunched under their heels. Fiedler kept his eyes forward, as he often did. “I could have sat you down with a notepad and accurately recorded your answers to my inquisition. It would have aggrieved you, but you would have been forthcoming to me. It would have been quick. Later, I would have settled down by the light of the study and, how do you say, _weeded_ out all your little half-truths and misstatements.” Leamas said nothing. “It was my initial plan, incidentally.”

“That would’ve gone down well,” he commented sharply. Fiedler might have smiled.

“When I first met you, Mister Leamas,” _ah,_ they both remembered that night quite well. The whisky with no soda. _I’m afraid all they have is this dreadful lemonade,_ Fiedler had said. _Fuck off_ , Leamas had replied. More or less. “You complicated my plans. I wanted to extract all I could from you. All you could consciously know. But you knew more than that, Mister Leamas. I have already told you. There is so much you _unconsciously_ know. Pins and paperclips. There is only one way to stop you withholding from me, all that you are capable of knowing.”

 _Bloody smart._ Leamas could have rolled his eyes. “Trust. That’s the secret then? You need me to trust you.” Fiedler nodded quite simply, yes. It seemed that Fiedler and George had a lot more in common than either of them would come to realise. Leamas did his best to push the unsettling feeling away, but it swelled at the pit of his belly. “Do you think I trust you now, Fiedler?”

At one point, the leaves had gathered and then separated into a defined and well-worn path. He wondered briefly whose heels had pressed into the grooves before him. Who had walked with Fiedler before him.

“I am your ally, Mister Leamas.” A pause. Leamas didn’t quite know how to respond. _Well, George…_ “You fascinate me. I do not buy what you are selling, Mister Leamas. You are not the shallow man I initially presumed. What you are hiding from me I well uncover in due time.”

Leamas stopped. His boots began to sink into the trail, the leather now wet with mud from the fresh rain.

“Is it the cleverest thing to tell me this, Fiedler?”

Fiedler turned, so the sharp lines of his back did not face Leamas. His face was open, for once. “Perhaps not. But you are my ally also, and it seems the right thing to do.”

“The right thing.” He rolled the words in his mouth. “The right thing?”

The question had no answer, so Fiedler did not bother with one.

“I hate you.”

The words sounded weak even to his own ears. Fiedler smiled.

“Consciously, perhaps.”

And then his back was once more to Leamas, and he walked on.

“Bloody smart,” Leamas muttered into the wind.

He followed.


	3. C is for consensus ad idem

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Meaning: a meeting of the minds

_Meaning: a meeting of the minds_

 

Fiedler ate carefully. He began by wiping down the water-spotted fork until patches of light bounced off the gleaming silver. Around the three flat tines, his thin fingers seemed to pirouette easily until he pressed the manicured line of his nail into the napkin and polished down and down, sliding to the shaft.

Leamas followed the gentle movements with his eyes, making no comment. Fiedler took no notice, flipping the fork in his hand until he was satisfied it was clean. And then, very carefully, he tilted it to the side and cut a piece of potato perfectly in half, as if he were using a knife.

No on in the café took notice of them. There was an old waitress with mud caking the heels of her shoes and a coffee-stained tag marked _ESTHER_ pinned to her shirt. She stumbled around slowly, joints wearied by some early arthritis, Leamas guessed. It bent her elbows ninety-degrees like cheap coat hangers, so when she served their burnt black coffee she had to tilt her entire torso over the table.

Fiedler had looked up, but not at Leamas. He had moved on to a piece of lettuce in his very dry salad, and his eyes narrowed on the lonely salt shaker sitting between them.

Leamas had very little to say, and scooped a large spoonful of his stew into his mouth. He chewed for a long time. The meat might have been beef or lamb, it was so dry he could hardly tell. The lentils hadn’t been boiled before they unceremoniously flooded the dark broth, so every crunch between his teeth was salted gravel.

“I see why you ordered the salad,” he choked out after forcing himself to swallow. Fiedler looked up, fork halfway to his lips.

“You would know about difficult things to swallow, Mister Leamas,” Fiedler interrupted himself with a small smile, and Leamas huffed a heavy laugh.

Esther’s withered head perked up from around the dirty counter, but it slid back down as she bent her back again. Leamas wrapped his strong fingers around his glass, and washed away the grimy taste in his mouth with lukewarm coffee.

Fiedler’s dark eyes flashed at the wide rim, and the curl of his fingers tightened around the shaft of his fork as if he were fighting the urge to polish the glass spotless for Leamas. The older man rolled his eyes.

“I hadn’t realised you were so touchy about some water spots, Fiedler.” He drained half the glass easily, ameliorating the fuzziness that had grown in his gums. He glanced down at his barely touched stew and pushed it away by the rim of the bowl. Fiedler bit into another potato. He only spoke after he swallowed.

“I hope you appreciate the change of scenery, Mister Leamas?”

The leather was fractured under his thighs, and it stabbed eagerly into his thick trousers. The back of the chair creaked obnoxiously if he pushed his shoulders against it too hard, and the bones of the table beneath his plate trembled if his mug thudded too hard against the top. The café was peeling. The corners of the walls had dirtied from white to an awkward grey, and the little curtains taped shut across the cracked window panes had holes in some places. Old Esther was the loveliest thing in the place, and she due to croak yesterday.

Leamas nodded eagerly, “Charming.” Fiedler speared another yellow vegetable. It was the saddest lettuce Leamas had ever seen, but it didn’t seem to bother the German. “You counting your calories or something?”

“Or something,” was the reply, and then silence.

Leamas forced down another spoonful of stew, but he ate around the lentils and sawed his mystery meat into smaller bits first. It went down easier. Fiedler watched him with amusement.

“Why’d you take me on this date anyway?”

“As I said, Mister Leamas, I thought you might enjoy the change of scenery.”

The meat was easier to swallow than his sigh.

“Cut the crap Fiedler,” he pushed his spoon back into the stew and left it to sink slowly. “You take me to a café in the middle of god-knows-where, _fuck_ , I don’t even think God knows where this bloody place _is,_ and you pay for my food – if you can call this _food_ , and you just sit there reading that damn salt shaker and polishing that damn fork and eating like one of those sorority girls I used to date that counted all their damn calories so there’s still a gap between their thighs, and-”

Fiedler was still chewing slowly, and his eyes were back on the loose label of the shaker.

“Are you even _listening_?”

The younger man glanced up at him, and offered a most charming smile. It fit, in the curious space between them, between the sharp edges of Fiedler’s tines and Leamas’ thick _stew_ and their occasionally poisonous banter.

In what universe should Leamas have smiled _back_?

He did.

“I thought you did not believe in God, Mister Leamas.”

“That’s it?”

Leamas’ deadpanned expression seemed to swelter the amusement within Fiedler. He finally placed his shiny fork face down in the napkin by a still half-filled plate. No wonder he was so thin, Leamas thought.

“Sorry, Mister Leamas?”

“All of that, and you only get _God_ out of it?”

Fiedler blinked at him, and his eyes seemed to darken and grow, and Leamas wished he could look away from the sly bastard.

“Why are we here, Fiedler?”

“That is a very profound question, indeed, Mister Leamas.”

“Oh for God’s sake-”

“Consensus ad idem.”

A pause. Leamas’ fingers pushed against his forehead. “You brought me here for another Latin lesson? Are you for real right now Fiedler? Wasn’t fucking _bona fide_ and _ad hominem_ enough?”

Fiedler seemed pleased that Leamas remembered his language, and Leamas should not have felt that same ridiculous warmth.

“Directly translated, it means _meeting of the minds._ ” Leamas did not bother with a response. He pushed his shoulders back against the creaky chair and let it creak obnoxiously. “I thought that removing ourselves from the cabin and the guards and all those files would ameliorate any negative sentiments you may have about our…” he took a moment to fish the precise word from his silver pond, “contract.”

“And how’s that?”

Fiedler pressed his thin hands together. They looked translucent under the garish light. “Removing ourselves from a professional and formal environment to a more casual facility is more likely to reconfigure your perspective on our respective positions in this relationship.” The stew was going cold, and Leamas could not care less. If he asked, Leamas was sure Fiedler could cite the exact textbook he’d gotten his assessment from. “I brought you here, Mister Leamas, because I do not wish for you to see us as informant-handler. There is no hierarchy. I wish for you to see us as…”

“Friends.”

Fiedler licked his lower lip, his tongue darting quickly. Leamas wondered if it was subconscious. “I would have said partners, but if you prefer…”

“Partners works _fine_ ,” Leamas corrected himself, forcing the other word back down his throat. His neck burned. Fiedler’s eyes seemed to soften ever so slightly.

“Mister Leamas…”

“If we’re going to be _partners_ or allies or whatever,” he dismissed with a wave of his hand, “you might as well cut that out. I’m not your bloody dad, Fiedler.”

Fiedler nodded easily, his shoulders loosening against the chair. “Do you prefer Leamas or Alec?”

“Stop taking the piss,” he rolled his eyes, and pushed back from the table with his knees. The chair squeaked against the tiles, drawing white lines as it cleared away the grime.

Fiedler hadn’t yet moved when Leamas turned.

“And next time you take a boy on a date, Fiedler, be a little classier, yeah?”

“As you like, Leamas.”


	4. D is for de facto

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Meaning: in fact.

_Meaning: In fact_

“Tell me about their intimacy.”

Leamas’ eyebrows drew together as if bound with twine, the barest grooves of a frown crinkling his forehead.

One eyebrow rose on its own accord. It might have been comical. “You want me to talk about their sex lives?”

Fiedler paused for the slightest moment. The slim lines of his back straightened, and he flattened both hands on the pantry door in a pause. Pointing his sharp, shaven chin at Leamas, “Intimacy, Leamas. Not sex.”

Leamas didn’t have the time to catch Fiedler’s eye before he continued his rummaging. The shuffle of his socked feet was silent against the floorboards, so even the slightest creak was lost to Leamas’ ears as the other man stood on his tip toes to reach the top shelf. Fiedler didn’t believe in wearing shoes indoors. It was frighteningly domestic.

He leant back against the counter, lowering his elbows to the cool marble. “Isn’t it the same thing?”

“Mmm,” Fiedler’s smooth voice was muffled. His cotton shirt pulled along all the angles of his torso just the right way. The hem travelled up the line of his hips when he stretched his arms upwards, pulling a trio of jars from the shelf. For the shortest moment, a sliver of white skin gleamed obnoxiously in the mid-afternoon light, right above the waistband of Fiedler’s trousers, and Leamas did not look away. He’d gotten much better to adapting. “Not quite.” Fiedler finally turned to face him, thin arms full, and Leamas had almost forgotten he’d been speaking. “You don’t need to see someone naked to be intimate with them, Leamas, I do not think.”

Pickled cabbage, pickled cucumber, thyme leaves. One beside the other Fiedler lined them neatly. His arm brushed against Leamas’. It was unavoidable in the cramped kitchen.

“That’s a little too pretentious for us simple Englishmen,” he snorted in reply. Fiedler manoeuvred himself sideways between Leamas and the other counter. Leamas straightened to make room for the younger man.

He ducked, and from the fridge pulled a parcel wrapped in paper. Balancing it on the crook his elbow like an amateur waiter, Fiedler drew with his other hand a smaller package, similarly wrapped.

“What is intimacy to the English, then, Leamas?” The quiet words rolled of his tongue casually, absent-mindedly. Leamas wondered if he his mind really was elsewhere, or if it was just another illusion.

Fiedler squeezed past Leamas again. With his arms full his coordination was thwarted, and if he’d spent a second longer Leamas would have felt warm breath on the skin of his neck.

The close proximity had stopped bothering either of them long ago. It was a marvel, really.

Leamas blinked. He folded his arms across his chest. _What is intimacy?_ George had given him adequate warning about Fiedler’s affinity for peculiar investigations. An entire lecture, rather, over too much scotch and wariness.

 _You mustn’t let your guard down around him Alec. All his questions – they’ve a purpose. His rationale will not always be so obvious – in fact, I am certain it will rarely be._ At that point, George had pulled the drink from Leamas’ hand and held onto his wrist with a shackling grip. It had all been very melodramatic. _You mustn’t let him fool you his colloquialisms._

_He is not your friend._

“Squeeze a lemon for me, won’t you?”

Fiedler was unwrapping the bigger package. He seemed to have given up on weeding an answer out of Leamas, and that put him on edge. Leamas’ mouth was dry.

He turned to the plastic basket behind him and drew the biggest lemon of the bunch. It fit comfortably in his palm. Christ. He was cooking with Fiedler.

_What the hell am I doing?_

Leamas pulled a worn chopping board and a knife from the rack, slicing the lemon cleanly in half. The blade hit the board a touch too aggressively, and from the across the kitchen Fiedler raised his head. He said nothing, and Leamas offered nothing.

Palming both halves of the lemon, he strolled to the other man. Out of Fiedler’s first mystery package emerged two spotted fish.

“Trout,” he explained, and Leamas watched the thin blade disappear under the belly of the first fish. The flick of his wrist was smooth and practiced, parting the flesh and scales without resistance. He flayed each one in turn. “I hope you enjoy fish.”

“Seems a little redundant to ask now.” The slightest smile drew up the corner of Fiedler’s mouth. “Anyway, I can’t believe you’re cooking me dinner.”

“I promised, did I not?” Fiedler reached around Leamas for the board and laid out the fish like butterflies with their wings spread wide. “Would you…”

Leamas fisted his fingers around the lemons, squeezing the juice and pulp free from the thick yellow skin. Once the last drop had trickled into the pink flesh, Fiedler pulled the fruit from Leamas’ hands and rubbed it along the back of the fish, careful not to break the silvery skin.

“What’s your definition then?”

Fiedler glanced up at him too quickly, and Leamas took the moment to push salt and pepper shakers into his open hands. Bowing his head, he began to season.

“Definition of?” This part was an act, Leamas was sure. _What else_?  “Potatoes?”

“How many?” He turned back to their little basket.

“Three? Four? To your fancy.”

Leamas rolled his eyes. He pulled a peeler from the top drawer and began on the potatoes. “Your definition of intimacy.”

“Well,” the familiar _tick-tick-tick_ sounded as Fiedler turned on the gas and lit a gentle flame. Leamas watched from the corner of his eye as the German rested a pan on the stove top and drizzled oil. While it warmed, he pulled a small pot up to the sink and began to fill it with water. “Intimacy, by definition, can be established simply through a close or familiar relationship. It need not be romantic. Only comfortable, requiring trust.”

Of course Fiedler would give him the Oxford Dictionary definition. Leamas began halving the small potatoes.

Fiedler returned the pot to the stop and sprinkled salt into the water. He turned up the heat and returned to his jars. Leamas took his place, waiting for the water to boil. He watched as very gently, little bubbles began to rise, breaking through the clear surface.

“So English people are not intimate beyond sex?” Leamas replied with a noise of non-committal. Fiedler lined two clean plates with pickled cabbage and cucumber before he moved to unwrap the second parcel.

“That makes us sound quite sad, actually.” _Plop._ The first potato sank quickly before it rose. Leamas carefully dropped in the rest, with two fingers clamped around the edge of each piece so boiling water didn’t slosh above the rim of the pot. “We have friends. And you-”

He forgot about the potatoes for a moment. “You _have butter_?”

Fiedler’s knife made a thin slice in the block of smooth yellow butter. The blade seemed to melt right through, and the smell – _oh that smell -_ flourished from the paper and into Leamas’ nostrils. Saliva wet his tongue. Christ. How long had it been since he’d had good, _proper_ butter?

“I too have friends,” Fiedler’s reply was amused. He lined his slice along the now hot pan and rewrapped the rest.

Leamas looked at him blankly.

“You have friends?”

“I should be affronted, Leamas.” The younger man squeezed beside him, spreading the butter and oil with a wooden spoon before easing both fish into the pan. From his last unopened jar, he drew a generous handful of thyme leaves and sprinkled them onto the trout.

Leamas’ words were tied up on his tongue. Fiedler had _friends –_ or one friend at least – who had given to him something so precious as a fat block of fresh butter. It wasn’t the old, wet rancid stuff they’d been selling in Berlin market corners, either. How many rations did a commoner have to trade for such a luxury? George had made Fiedler out to be some loner – _uninterested in political intrigue_ , without ambition, ousted, ostracised. And yet he was asking about _intimacy_ , formulating a contrived plan to flay Mundt like one of his trouts, and someone had given him _butter._

He really needed to call George.

“It was a gift?”

“Mmm,” and he did not elaborate, focusing on frying the fish. The smell was absolutely wonderful. None of that backwater café stench with the oil so old you had to melt the chunks where it had crystallised before using it.  Leamas could have cried.

A _szzz-szzz_ statically interrupted the silence. After a few minutes, Fiedler gently flipped the trout. Their bellies had become an angry, robust pink.

“Are you comfortable being intimate, Leamas?”

Sometimes, he wondered whether Fiedler had any tact at all, or whether the whole blood thing was an act. Leamas began to ease the potatoes from the boiling water, one half at a time, shaking them as dry as possible before plotting them on the paper towel. “I’m a social creature, Fiedler.”

“Might I ask you a few questions, then?”

“Isn’t that what you’ve been doing?”

Fiedler ignored his comment. “Do you agree that to be intimate is to be closely acquainted with another person?”

“Mmm,” the last of the potatoes were out of the pot. He cornered one half away from the others, pushing the flat end of his fork against the soft, crumbling flesh. Not too soft, not too hard.

“And that the acquaintance is founded on confidentiality and secret knowledge?”

“Secret knowledge?” Leamas rolled half the potatoes into one plate carefully, and the rest onto the one beside it. They made a delightful looking frame against the whites and greens of the pickled vegetables. Leamas glanced at his companion briefly, watching the delicate twist of his wrist. The gas was off, and Fiedler gently pierced the trout with his silver prongs. A lovely pink through and through.

A sarcastic voice punctured his thoughts: _what a team we make._

Satisfied, Fiedler let the fish rest a moment as he continued his interrogation.

“Knowledge to which others may not be privy.”

God forbid the man end his sentence with a proposition. “Hmm.”

“So it does not require sexual possession or interaction with another person?”

“I know where this is going, Fiedler.” Leamas took the bait nonetheless. “Fine, yes.”

“Therefore, you agree that intimacy is plausible without sex?”

A sigh inflated Leamas’ lungs. He watched Fiedler draw the pan to him by the handle and gently ease the trout onto the plates, between the pickles and cream-coloured potatoes. A bloody simple dish, but something about it made his chest warm. The sort of warm that came from feeding the ducks and peeling cafes. A dangerous sort of warm. “Yes, fine, okay. Intimacy is being allied. I’ll give you that. So, what if sex hasn’t much to do with it?”

Fiedler held out one of the plates to him. His hand outstretched, “Are we not intimate then, Leamas? You and I?”

The words lodged in Leamas’ throat like a fishbone. He choked on nothing but the salvia on his tongue, thumping a closed fist into his chest. Fiedler’s eyes were too dark and too intense and Leamas blinked quickly to escape them.

“ _Fuck_ , Fiedler-”

“Does the idea of being intimate with me bother you?”

“ _Yes,_ we’re not fucking married, Fiedler. We’re not _intimate,_ that’s not-”

“You admitted sex is not a prerequisite to intimacy.”

“That doesn’t mean-”

“We have lived in the same lodgings for weeks, Leamas. Our socks fall into the same wash basket. Irrespective, we are physically acquainted. I know you were married, you have two teenage children. I know you prefer Cardhu over Hammerhead Scotch and otherwise you only drink Steinhager. Your favourite colour is grey. George Smiley is your dearest friend. You have an affinity for horses. You-” His voice was twisted with tension and he seemed to be crying out, _need I go on?_ “That is knowledge I will keep to myself. Secret knowledge. I have given you my word. Have we not established confidentiality?”

Leamas took a step back. The kitchen felt a little more cramped, and the grey walls creeped a little closer. His fingers listlessly curled around the edge of the plate and he yanked it from Fiedler’s grasp so quickly one of his potatoes tumbled off the edge. It landed with an awkward _thud._

Fiedler imprisoned him with that devastating gaze. “We may not be _friends_ , by your standards, Leamas. But we are indeed. It is axiomatic. De facto, if you like. You said so yourself in that café, we-”

“We’re not fucking _friends_ , Fiedler. That was bloody slip of the tongue. Not friends, not allies, not lovers, not whatever the hell fantasy you’ve got mapped out up in that delusional brain of yours, okay?”

Leamas knocked their shoulders together as he shoved past, an uncomfortable anger pulsing from his heels to his forehead. The younger man let him leave, but everything he needed to prove was embedded in that terrible, breath-sucking silence.

_Fuck you and your goddamn games._

*

Alone, in his little bedroom with his back pressed against the peeling blue wall and a plate of cold fish in his lap, Leamas wished he were anywhere else.

Friends.

He’d had that ridiculous word slip in that ridiculous little run-down cafe, between gravel-stew and banter. _We’re not friends, we’re not. We’re not intimate. This meant nothing. He meant nothing._

Fiedler meant _nothing_ to him. Absolutely fuck all, that’s how much he meant. That’s how much he…

Fuck. _Fuck._


	5. E is for ex gratia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Meaning: voluntary payment to fulfil a moral obligation; without legal necessity.

_Meaning: voluntary payment to fulfil a moral obligation; without legal necessity._

In the next few days alone, tension filled the cabin with the same suffocating omnipresence as biting English fog. It filtered sneakily through all the nooks and corners too tall for Fiedler to reach, from beneath the crack of one bedroom door to the next. It was an uncomfortable intruder that made the wooden floor boards beneath Leamas’ feet as brittle as ice.

“Leamas,” a smooth voice snuck into his ear. Leamas swallowed his sigh, turning his back to the door. How could such a quiet word fill all the spaces between them?

He was buttoning the top of his shirt when the knob turned. The door gave the weakest squeak as Fiedler pushed it open. Leamas hadn’t told him to come in.

“Why do you bother knocking?” Christ, he cleared his throat. His voice sounded gruff. It had been days since he’d growled more than two words at the younger man.

He turned when Fiedler didn’t reply.

The sleepless nights came alive on his face in opaque blue-purple smudges under eyes too dark, lines around the soft curve of his mouth. A persistent exhaustion pressed itself into Fiedler and became his second skin, manifesting into a heavy weight that slanted his usually rigid shoulders.

Leamas breathed out through his nose, forcing his eyes to the wall behind Fiedler. “What?”

“I am going away,” he replied so simply. “To Berlin.”

“Oh.”

Fiedler drew his hands behind his back. Leamas imagined he clasped those thin, strong ink-stained fingers tightly together to avoid fidgeting. He so often did, and the older man would smile to himself and pretend not to notice.

Leamas did not smile. The silence stretched awkwardly.

“I will only be a few days.”

Leamas could have asked. Perhaps he ought to have. He kept his lips pressed together in a fine impenetrable line of disinterest.

For his part, Fiedler very subtly hid any dissatisfaction he may have felt. Leamas gave him credit. The way his thin body remained motionless beneath the pressed shirt and trousers, the way his ribcage moved too evenly with every _push-pull-push_ of his breaths. Knees aligned, chin tilted, elbows symmetrical. His body language gave nothing away.

And his face – Leamas spent far too long thinking about the way those hollow cheeks looked fractured by candlelight. The way his lips would twist and his eyes would brighten in tandem with the movement, the way two wheels of a bike spun together. Leamas looked at his face and saw nothing – a deliberate nothing.

Fiedler was clever enough to rely on the exhaustion to shield himself from Leamas’ well-trained glance.

“Leamas…” just as he received nothing, he gave Fiedler nothing in return. The younger man wanted him to say something, if not with words than with his face or his body or his calloused hands. But Leamas kept his back straight and his silence rigid.

“Goodbye,” Fiedler finally conceded.

Leamas turned his back. The door closed with a quiet _thud,_ and Fiedler was gone as swiftly as the fog he brought with him.

*

Fiedler’s absence did strange, unwelcome things to Leamas.

The anger and irritation bubbling, simmering beneath the thin layers of his skin eased, as if the flame had been switched off from beneath the pot.

He dropped himself into a garden chair. It was a cheap wooden thing that sunk too far into the soil when he sat. Both feet pressed into the grass, he leaned his head against the back of the chair.

The sky was grey, smudged with cotton-white clouds here and there. It was late in the evening, and the sentries were busying themselves with gossip just out of his line of sight. Their obnoxious chatter drifted with the crisp wind, all the way from the line of trees breaking the green field. He kept a quick eye in their direction.

Fiedler hadn’t trusted them. They weren’t _his_ men. Leamas was clever enough to know not to turn his back, especially without the younger man to protect-

Protect him. Huh. Fiedler protecting Leamas from his own people.

What a fucking playground.

Leamas snorted. What was Fiedler doing galivanting in the big city anyway? More reports to circulate around Section 5? More yes-men to harass and humiliate?

He refocused. One of the white smudges looked as if it had ears. A little dog, Leamas decided. He squinted hard. He couldn’t make out the breed. What breed of hound would Fiedler be? A loyal, obedient golden retriever, perhaps.

No, no Fiedler was something of a rebel, Leamas knew. Refusing to participate in political intrigues and social circles. A manifestly absurd rejection of German Democratic culture that bloody well was.

Maybe he was a terrier. He walked like one. Whenever he dragged Leamas up that darned hill to watch the sun set into the white line of the horizon, dying the beeches amber. His quick, agile body made his strides long and determined and his head was always held up, looking ahead. Only ever ahead.

“Damn it,” Leamas could see his breath. He sat up, feeling terribly indigent for the briefest moment. “Are you fucking _happy_ Smiley?”

It was barely a whisper, but it made his heart beat violently against his ribs. God, this was too much. The cover was too deep. He was becoming something he wasn’t.

_Friends._

Friends.

He and Fiedler were friends. Leamas didn’t have many friends. He had George, occasionally Gullium when the man wasn’t being a complete tart. He had Liz once too. And for all he’d seen of her, that beautiful naïve girl, he’d seen just as much of Fiedler. All the little quirks and desire and fear the younger man could never hide from him, no matter how valiantly he tried.

The way he took small bites when he ate. How carefully he would spear the food with his fork, as if to ensure it wasn’t poisoned. How his little finger would twitch when he lifted the teacup to his lips, always full of tea he brewed himself. Always too much chamomile and not enough bergamot. How he held his hands behind his back when he couldn’t control his fingers, when he didn’t want Leamas to read from his hands the expression he hid from his face. His love of Steinhager after midnight and cigarettes at dawn.

All the little things Leamas refused to analyse and investigate because he was too afraid to find out too much. Because he was afraid to see what Fiedler did not want him to.

Maybe it was time. Maybe.

Leamas closed his eyes. The clouds disappeared.

*

When Fiedler returned, it was raining.

The old windows croaked anxiously against the pelting, beaten hollow by the angry shove of wind. Leamas’ chin tilted, ears perking instinctively as the shuffle of an opening door broke the rhythm.

The door closed just as quickly, and inside stood Fiedler, his sleeves discoloured and wet, the loose curls of his hair matted and slightly wild.

Leamas barely refocused on his book, sweeping his eyes cleanly over the younger man as he did. So rarely had Fiedler looked anything other than sleek. It was almost human.

“Good trip?”

Fiedler was toeing off his shoes as he answered, “We are on speaking terms, Leamas?”

There was that terrible amusement in his voice, and it dripped with sarcasm like oozing honey. As if nothing had changed.

“Mm,” Leamas confirmed. He hadn’t realised he’d decided to forgive Fiedler. Somehow, today, it didn’t matter. “You still need to win me over, though.”

Fiedler eased the heavy coat from his shoulders. The clothes he wore underneath faired a little better, but they still stuck to his body in a way only wet clothes did. The white of his shirt was more translucent than it should have been, and in the orange light Leamas could trace the dip of his hollow stomach from the bottom of his sternum and past his belly button. It was as if every time Leamas looked over the younger man, he became thinner, narrower, slighter. All the lines of his body were too sharp and pronounced to be healthy, and Leamas wanted so terribly to press his knuckles hard into the shallow spaces until Fiedler’s perfectly measured breathing broke with a _hitch_.

Leamas blinked.

“What?”

Fiedler’s feet hadn’t made a sound against the floorboards. Even the spider bones of his feet protruded from his navy socks. A piece of Renaissance art some poor bastard spent too long perfecting.

He was a metre away from where Leamas sat on the couch, one strong hand extended. The neck of an opaque glass bottle dangled between his long fingers.

Leamas raised is eyebrow. Fiedler smiled, and the arch of his lips didn’t settle until the older man conceded. Their fingers only touched for the barest second, and it was enough for that curious feeling to settle like a pebble inside his ribcage.

“Soda water.” As if that explained anything. “For your whiskey.”

Leamas examined the heavy bottle in his hands. There was no label, no brand. The top was attached by a metal hook you could pop up with the nail of your thumb. It was almost as if someone had filled it by hand.

“I thought they only had that wretched lemonade.”

“They do.” Fiedler did not elaborate, but there was a vicious twinkle in his dark eyes, and it told Leamas enough.

Part of him wanted to toss the bottle against the cabin wall, watching the near-translucent glass disintegrate into a million tiny shards. How it would disappear between the cracks in the floorboards with a riveting _crunch._ Would that make Fiedler blink?

Instead, Leamas smiled.

It was a little, quiet thing. He didn’t have to remind himself, either. It was frightening.

“Is this some _ex gratia_ payment?”

“I see you are getting rather good at Latin.”

“This doesn’t mean I forgive you.”

Fiedler turned, and Leamas was left to stare at his retreating back. “Shall I fetch the whiskey?”

He felt his whole body _sink_ into the couch. Defeat. “Yeah,” he muttered quietly, but Fiedler heard. He always heard.

“Get the bloody whisky.”


	6. F is for ficta confessio

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You deliberately doing this?” He murmured. That raised him to seventeen. Fiedler looked far too innocent not to have a hand in his unfortunate cards. “Don’t like cheaters.”
> 
> “I would never cheat, Leamas,” he responded, far too innocently. “Besides, this was your proposition, was it not?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> that took an unexpected turn

_Meaning: fictitious confession_

 

Fifty one days, twelve hours, thirty one minutes. It was eleven o’clock.

In another lifetime, Leamas met a man named Yousef. In a little concrete-walled cell secreted deep in the bowels of the Jordanian desert, with a single fifty-one centimetre square hole in the wall in the far right corner, allowing broken yellow light to stream between rusted bars.

Yousef was a good man, if not a little peculiar. He would count, through chapped lips with terribly dry breath, the turn of every hour they spent together in captivity. The makeshift window told Leamas much the same, but Yousef insisted on counting, counting, counting. Funny really, that the last word spilling from his mouth, with blood and brain matter was _twenty-_

Twenty-three hundred. Eleven o’clock.

What was left of those dark eyes, black and unseeing, stared aimlessly at the ceiling. There hadn’t been much, what with one side of his skull caved into his nose, and the splintered bones breaking through the skin like spikes someone unceremoniously shoved through the back of his head.

They left Yousef’s head lolling against Leamas’ thigh, warm blood and gunk seeping into his filthy sweatpants. Taunting.

_Why count, for fuck’s sake? There’s a window right there –_

_It keeps my mind occupied._

_Being conscious of the time keeps you occupied?_

Yousef turned to him then, with the same eyes that spilled eagerly from his face now –

_Time is not infinite, Alec. All hours must pass. I’m not counting. I’m counting down. With every hour we move closer to the end._

Leamas had passed it off as the ramblings of a man whose sanity anxiously slipped further away from his grasp day by day. _Time is not infinite._ What philosophical bullshit.

Fifty one days, twelve hours, forty two minutes.

He leaned back further against the leg of the couch, suffocating the sigh still in his throat. He leaned his elbows of on the dingy timber coffee table, head hanging loose above the wood. Many Yousefs had come, and many Yousefs had gone the same way his Yousef had, blood and brain matter and bone beaten into a revolting deformed Eton mess.

“Alright,” Fiedler smiled impishly from across the little table. He sat similarly cross legged on the hard floor, “you may begin.”

Leamas eyed the deck of cards Fiedler dexterously manoeuvred with his skilled fingers, thoughtlessly cutting the deck in half, and then in half again.

He breathed in the musk and burning wood through his nose, squinting at the colourful array of beer bottle caps splayed before him. He nudged three copper caps across to the middle of the table. He still had one shiny red aluminium cap, two blue plastic ones, and a rogue cork he rescued from under the sofa.

“Not much of a betting man, Leamas?”

They both knew careful was the last thing he cared to be, and that was what made it so funny.

He smiled back humourlessly. “Are you going to deal today?”

Two cards slid facedown between the minefield of caps.

Leamas inched his nail just underneath the cheap plastic. Diamond Jack, Heart two. Twelve.

“Hit me.”

Fiedler slid another card across.

Diamond two.

Leamas almost rolled his eyes.

“Impatient Leamas?”

“Are dealers usually so conversational?”

Fiedler _tutted_ the most pretentious _tut_ Leamas had ever heard, and he spent six years in Eton. “Mmm, perhaps you owe me some leeway for that tantrum you threw last week.”

He rolled his eyes. “It was hardly a tantrum. Hit me.”

Fiedler fixed him with a blank look, and Leamas fought valiantly against the smile. He had accepted he was well and truly fucked after those two glasses of whisky and _very_ good soda.

Spade three.

Christ, it was a slow day.

“You deliberately doing this?” He murmured. That raised him to seventeen. Fiedler looked far too innocent not to have a hand in his unfortunate cards. “Don’t like cheaters.”

“I would never cheat, Leamas,” he responded, _far_ too innocently. “Besides, this was your proposition, was it not?”

Leamas let his cards lie face down on the table. It was. A poor mimicry of Black Jack. Bust twenty-one, Fiedler asks him one question. Twenty-one exactly, he asks.

Fiedler did not have to humour him. He owed him nothing.

“Hit me.”

Heart Five.

_Goddamnit._

Leamas flipped over the cards with a long-suffering sigh. Fiedler paused his shuffling and skimmed his eyes over the upturned cards. He looked far too satisfied with himself.

“Where were you born?”

“…What?”

Leamas’ eyebrow could not climb higher on his forehead had it been sentient.

Fiedler was fiddling with the deck of cards again, eyes flitting between them almost restlessly. “In which city were you born?”

“On my file it says-”

“Kent, I know,” Fiedler interrupted simply. “But I’m hardly inclined to believe the contents of your file, Leamas.”

The words, innocuous as they were, balled up into a stone at the pit of his stomach. He kept the anxiety from his fingers and his eyes, smoothing the line of his mouth into a textbook perfect imitation of annoyance.

Fiedler glanced up with his dark eyes and seemed to look right through the mask.

_He doesn’t know. He can’t possibly know._

The thoughts eased the tension in his legs and shoulders. “Ardara.”

“Ireland.”

“Is this a geography lesson?” He slid his cards back across to Fiedler, and the deck ate them up again.

Still shuffling, the younger man continued: “When did you leave?”

“I thought we agreed on a one question basis.”

“You humour me now,” he slipped two cards from the deck, “I humour you later.”

When Leamas didn’t respond or pick up his cards, Fiedler matched his raised eyebrow. “I know you were vaccinated against measles in Kent when you were six as part of primary schooling requirements. I know you are fluent in Gaelic but were never formally taught. Your mother was born and raised in Kent and your father died when you were two. Your father’s parents never migrated to England. They would have been the most apt and accessible source of primitive Irish. You were an exceptionally gifted child if your schooling results are anything to go by – but even such a bright child requires good formative years to grasp such a difficult language to the level of fluency you have mastered. This leads me to believe your grandmother taught you until around the age of four. You would have left Ireland when you were about five.”

“You’ve done your reading.” But Leamas’ reply was hollow. Fiedler was probably privy to his first word too. Fuck. _Did you know George?_

 _No._ It was impossible that George knew how extensively Fiedler’s knowledge stretched and neglected to warn Leamas. It was impossible.

For a moment, as Fiedler reshuffled the deck, he was ubiquitous. He knew, he knew too much, and he’d chosen this very moment to reveal a glimpse of just _how much_ he knew about Leamas. He could probably recite facts about Leamas’ life that were vague to Leamas himself.

“I was five and a half, actually.”

He had his two cards. Diamond ace, heart six.

_Why choose this moment to unsettle me?_

“Hit me.”

Fiedler didn’t glance up as he slid another card across.

The game went on. Leamas lost twice more, and with every question built up the barriers around his lies. He told Fiedler about all the Yousefs, all the little cramped cells in the bowels of god knows where. All the while, the restricted scope for misdirection and lies bore down on him heavily and uncomfortably. Fiedler knew, knew more than Leamas had ever realised, and it was terrifying.

When Fiedler smiled, it was pretence. Every smile hammered the same message: _I know when you’re lying._ Even when he couldn’t possibly.

_Could he?_

Last round. He was out of bottle caps.

“Hit me.”

He glanced down. Diamond seven. That made –

“Twenty-one.”

He flipped the four cards face up for Fiedler’s review.

“Twenty-one,” the young man confirmed. He set the deck down carefully and leaned back. One thin hand rested on the tabletop, while the other curled by his face. With one slender finger Fiedler smoothly traced the line of his sharp jaw, drawing Leamas’ eyes to his carefully sculpted face, silently beckoning him to ask.

The question was speared with a single intention alone: to unsettle. To unsettle his ally-enemy-friend- _stranger_ just as he’d been deliberately unsettled.

“Who is Mundt to you?”

The surprise Fiedler carefully masked from his face came alive in the delicate clench on his hand against the wood. Unnoticeable, if you were not looking for it.

“A liar. A cheat, fraud-”

“This isn’t word association,” Leamas pressed on coldly. “I know things too, Fiedler. I know he shook your hand at Hamburg, recruited you, introduced you to the top cats at the Party. What do you call it? False confessions _?_ Don’t lie to me. Who is Mundt to you?”

Fiedler looked at Leamas in a way that deeply discomforted him. “Ficta confessio,” he muttered.

With his eyes he held the older man in place, gaze swift and hard against Leamas’ own. With his hand, flattened unmovingly against the tabletop, long fingers splayed. With the delicate tilt of his chin, the crease between his eyebrows.

 _Do you really want to know,_ he asked with no words at all.

“Mundt was my friend. Is that what you would like to hear?” Leamas had nothing to say to that. “He was my confidante. My teacher. I was his greatest accomplishment, once.”

Something dribbled between those quiet words, something _more_ between the carefully sculpted answer. Was he _just_ your confidante? Leamas could not bring himself to ask, could not bring himself to know.

“I loved him, yes. He taught me how to stand with my back straight, how to hold up my chin. He held my hand and showed me how to _shake_ just right…” Fiedler’s eyes flickered, for the briefest moment, to the fireplace crackling beyond Leamas’ shoulder. “His betrayal was so terrible to me because _he_ was so important to me. I saw our shadows striding side by side and I saw _infallibility._ Change _._ A new way for the vanguard. Yes – Mundt _was_ a promise to me. Now, my dear Leamas, to me Mundt _is_ nothing more than a liar, a cheat.” There was so much there, so much to keep Leamas awake at night with paralysing fears nibbling away at his peace. Fiedler was good at it – saying everything and nothing at all. “Do you find my answer satisfactory?”

No response could have possibly sufficed, so Leamas settled for leaning back on his hunches. Sliding the winning cards back across the table in silent apology,

“I suppose I could have been subtler.”

Fiedler blinked. He packed the cards back neatly into the deck but made no move to deal new ones.

“You had a right to know. Even though you already knew.”

_I guess I did._

The compatible quiet stretched with an odd evocation of comfort, a warm blanket against the sudden chill. Fiedler gracefully folded his legs beneath himself and stood. “You need your rest.”

His dismissal was as good as any. Leamas swept the bottle caps into the bin.

“Good night Fiedler,” his whisper ought to have been inaudible.

“Good night, Leamas.”

Fifty one days, thirteen hours, fifteen minutes.


	7. G is for guardian ad litem

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> All things considered, the amount of freedom Fiedler afforded him was surprising, subtly thickening the chain of trust he’d begun to weave between them. 
> 
> Or maybe, George’s voice traitorously murmured in his ear, Fiedler is simply loosening your leash, so you’re less likely to bite.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the plot thickens

_Meaning: an individual appointed by the Court to seek the best interests of the child._

 

“I am going to Berlin.”

Fiedler’s smooth voice drowned the quiet patter of rain trembling against the windows. Leamas swallowed his forkful of sauerkraut with a surprised gulp.

“So soon?”

Fiedler thoughtlessly twirled the knife between his nimble fingers. “You are welcome to come, should you wish.”

“Come with you?” He spoke around a bite of bread, voice tinged with curiosity. They had come a long way in the past few months, but Leamas hadn’t expected the younger man to be so forward. Fiedler looked all too comfortable, savouring the steamed fish in his mouth like a true connoisseur. With every bite, his tongue would dart slowly to tease his bottom lip, rolling between his teeth with a sip of wine. It was a proper imitation of the dinner they never managed to enjoy, all those weeks ago. Fiedler fondly referred to it as _a most English tantrum,_ in joke and in spite of Leamas, and the Englishman was almost too wary of the one-hundred and eighty degree turn Fiedler deviously steered him in since that day.

“It did not seem appropriate to ask you last time.” That fiasco had left Leamas sleepless and furious and a little but numb, but Fiedler’s impish smile was all good cheer. He knew what George would call this, with a most pretentious tilt of his chin: a step in a treacherous direction, masquerading as a joke between old friends.

_Oh George._

Gulping his own wine, “Why the hell not then.” He played the acidic taste on his tongue and winced, “This wine is shite, by the way.”

Fiedler honest to god laughed. It was a delicate, harmonious trill that rolled through his entire body, a touch feminine and far too casual. It was a sound Leamas was becoming more and more acquainted with, and it beckoned his own generous chortle. Terrible, he knew. Unthinkable, a mere three months ago, that he should be laughing with a man like Fiedler over dinner and wine, knees brushing beneath the table.

 _Pass me the salt, would you Dear,_ Fiedler tried once, in jest, and Leamas’ answering glare had the German pink with a fresh bout of good-natured laughter that left his stomach tumbling over itself.

 _How could you be lying to me?_ Leamas watched Fiedler, listening listlessly as the younger man spoke about this and that – absentmindedly filling the silence. A three-decade career in espionage informed him very intimately – Fiedler wasn’t lying. There was nothing fake about that harmonic trill, nothing fake about the ubiquitous mourning in his words when he spoke about Mundt that night.  _There couldn’t possibly be._

“Eloquent as usual, Leamas.” He almost missed the sarcastic response, before Fiedler swiftly moved on. “We leave tomorrow morning. A train departs every hour, we should make the eight-thirty.”

“We’re taking the train?”

Fiedler smiled. “No Leamas, I merely enjoy regaling you with the weekend freight timetable.”

“Bloody clever.”

*

They ended up catching the seven-thirty, much to Leamas’ displeasure.

“What an ungodly hour,” he yawned into his sleeve, resting his head against the windowpane. A sentry had driven them over to the station, a broad man of  _very_ few words with a posture stiff and colder than the weather. There seemed to be no love lost between he and Fiedler, and Leamas could see why he insisted on the train.

The young man slid his local Gazette across the little table between them, cross word side facing up as if commanding:  _entertain yourself child._  Leamas scoffed and pawed at the paper, pulling it into his lap. In its place Fiedler slid across a thin pen he’d unashamedly nicked from a local bank. It was heartening to see even he was not immune to the trivialities of ordinary men.

Leamas mentally translated.  _Ten down. Beginning in L, ending in E. Depleted of verve and vivacity._

Watching the countryside slip by, beeches reddening with every chug and stutter of the train, Leamas could breathe.

_Lebensmüde._

Across from him, Fiedler fondled a little pocket-sized book, starting from the wrong end. The script spilling across the yellow pages was in a beautiful cursive alphabet Leamas recognised but couldn’t read very well.

“You understand Arabic?”

Fiedler didn’t look up, thumbing through the pages slowly. “I am afraid I am not tremendous at it. Did you learn very much while you were in Jordan?”

Leamas absentmindedly filled in another two words. Fiedler’s question was easy enough, and he found himself sorting through the memory of all the Yousefs quite unaffectedly. “Let’s just say I’m not tremendous at it either.”

 _Fremdschämen,_ he scribbled in. “What’re you reading anyway?”

Fiedler smiled up at him sheepishly. Leamas catalogued it somewhere far in his mind, in a growing hub which housed all his other curious gestures. “An abridged version of One Thousand and One Nights.”

Leamas paused, “…You’re reading a children’s book?”

The smile grew. He could not look away, even if he tried. There was something venomously magnetic about Fiedler in that moment. “I did say I was not tremendous at it.”

Leamas couldn’t stifle his laughter either.

“Okay,” he continued a long while later, disrupting the comfortable silence. “Ten across. Beginning in P, ending in M. A tumble; an expression of joy.”

Fiedler closed his little book, finally, “Purzelbaum”.

“…A tree?”

Tucking his story into his leather messenger bag, Fiedler shook his head, “A somersault. All you need is a patch of green grass and a pair of trousers you are allowed to cover in dirt.”

It was so childish, Leamas had to doubletake. The thought of Fiedler barely the height of his knee, engaging in  _childish_ games like somersaults, trailing into his little cottage house a line of mud at sunset, his mother berating him with a well-practiced and often repeated lecture –

He couldn’t see it. Absolutely not. But –

There was a twinkle in the younger man’s eyes. A lovely, subtle thing. He remembered.  _You humour me, I humour you._ Fiedler was returning the favour.

He could. Leamas could see it very clearly, that lost day somersaulting in the sun, and it was frighteningly endearing.

*

They arrived at Berlin just before nine-fifteen, welcomed with few clouds and a suspiciously blue sky. Fiedler bought them freshly baked Danishes sticky with jam and a lick of cream from an old lady manning a little stand by the station exit. A terrible ecstasy coloured Fiedler’s face when he bit into the crunchy pastry, all teeth. It was easier to see the child in him now. A smidge of jam dotted his lower lip.

Leamas wondered, very briefly, what would happen if he cupped Fiedler’s smooth chin with his hand and wiped the jam with his thumb. The thought left his mouth dry and staunched the growl of his stomach, and he looked far away as Fiedler wiped his mouth with a napkin from the bottom of the brown paper bag.

They finished their pastries by the time they arrived at the waiting car. Fiedler turned to him as soon as he signalled the driver.

“There is a bureaucratic knot I must untangle this morning… and afternoon,” he added slowly, speaking like something bitter lingered on his tongue in spite of the sweet breakfast, “You are free to spend your time as you wish once we deposit our belongings at our accommodation. Would you be favourable to a late lunch afterwards?”

Leamas blinked, coming back to himself. Funny how Fiedler managed to transport him to a dozen different paths when they’d barely finished stumbling along one.

The streets had already begun to busy, even though it was Sunday. All things considered, the amount of freedom Fiedler afforded him was surprising, subtly thickening the chain of trust he’d begun to weave between them. Or maybe, George’s voice traitorously murmured in his ear,  _Fiedler is simply loosening your leash, so you’re less likely to bite._

Irrespective, the though left warmth in his belly. Harbouring distrust and  _dislike_ for Fiedler was becoming a more challenging task by the day.

“Alright. Should we meet at the hotel by two?”

Fiedler stopped ahead and pulled open the car door for him. Gentleman. He slid in beside Leamas and softly recited an address in the city centre.

As the car pulled down the cobble stone road, he smiled in agreement. “I suppose you will be gallivanting about the parks until then? Feeding the ducks?”

It was a fair assessment to make.

*

Fiedler’s Berlin was galvanising.

Leamas had never been especially fond of the city. Needlessly splintered into pieces by a looming prison-wall that paralysed you with the fear of uncertainty. It was an ugly thing he refused to visit in the free time he’d been allocated. Not for fear of the trigger happy guards with cold stoic faces, but for his weakness.

The wall repulsed him, a violent symbol of everything Fiedler stood for. Division, fear, treachery. It was his greatest weakness now. The ability to dismiss it impassively as eventually crumbling to the inevitability of time eluded him, because if –  _when –_ the wall came down, Fiedler would as well.

Not having to look upon it made it easier to ignore the ugly parts of Fiedler’s philosophy, the ruthless brutality and carnage on which he built his very reputation. He was so young, but even age could not temper his cruelty and the terror he invoked,and the wall was a living breathing testament of all the traits Leamas refused to linger on.

Fiedler treated him kindly, but that did not make him  _kind_ by any stretch of the word.

And perhaps Leamas was a coward for opting instead to sit in a park and crumb old bread into a duck pond.

 _It’ll be over soon enough,_ he thought miserably,  _Fiedler is a stepping stone to a comfy retirement, that’s all he is. That’s all._

But he wasn't.

One of the ducks angrily  _quacked_ at him. Leamas stood, tipping the rest of the bag into the water and watching the birds flock competitively toward the food, pecking at each other’s feathers.

“It’s because he’s my  _friend,_ you miserable sods.”

The realisation did not eat him up as he’d half-expected it would. It was something he was  _conscious of knowing,_ wasn’t it?

The thought left him resigned more than anything, and he was little prepared for the inkling of guilt tickling his ribcage more incessantly with every step he stumbled closer to the hotel.

He opted for the staircase winding up to the third floor instead of the elevator, decidedly not keen on pushing elbows with strangers. It was barely twelve-thirty when he slid the key into the lock, and the brevity of his gallivanting surprised even him. He and Fiedler could kill  _hours_ sitting on stiff benches and feeding ungrateful ducks, and here he was, returning to the little room an hour and a half before his curfew. Bloody hell.

He threw his keys carelessly on the nearest bedside table. Bypassing the single beds pushed at either side of the room, Leamas stumbled into the bathroom and splashed cold water into the hollows of his eyes. The flippancy of his mood, the sudden tossing and turning between cheer and endearment and resignation culminated into a persistent exhaustion which weighed heavily on his shoulders. Curling his fingers into the porcelain sink, he stared hard at his reflection from the crease between his eyebrows to his greying hair. Did all men age so quickly? Leamas only hoped his mood would life by the time he and Fiedler had lunch.

A jingle of keys.

_Speak of the bloody devil._

He dried his face on a little towel with haste, fingers brushing against the knob of the bathroom door.

“ _Jens, please-”_

Leamas paused, his entire body stilling. The door was open a crack, and he leaned forward silently, squinting –

Fiedler had hanged his coat and was pulling his jacket off of his slender shoulders, folding it carefully on the edge of his bed. A shadow loomed behind him, closing the door to the room with urgency.

“Walter, I am not a child.” He responded in German, and the serious answer surprised Leamas. In that moment he decided not to show himself.  _Fuck. This is a terrible idea._

Instead he kept a vigil on the stranger, who remained fully dressed. He was taller than Jens and sported a neatly combed mop of blond hair, and a striking pair of blue eyes.  _Walter_ looked like he’d just stepped out of a patriotic poster, shiny black oxford leaping over a bold red font:  _Your country needs you._

Fiedler sat on his bed, the furthest from the door. Walter sat on Leamas’, facing him directly. His face was conventionally handsome, but his nose was crooked where someone had broken it too many times. He planted his palms on his knees and leaned forward in a universal expression of forced forbearance.  _He doesn’t look like a bureaucratic knot you need to untangle, Fiedler._

“Listen to me-” there was a familiarity beneath the overbearing tension. Fiedler rolled his eyes, and something in Leamas clenched painfully at the casual gesture. Friends then. “For once in your goddamn life, _Jens Fiedler,_ listen to me!”

Fiedler didn’t startle. He stretched his arms behind him and crossed his legs carelessly, a dismissive move he must have performed a dozen times while graced with different variants of the same bloody conversation. “I’m not a fool, Walter. I’ve been  _so_ careful. I have taken every precaution. I-”

“Jesus Christ, Jens will youlisten to yourself?” The young man was broodingly silent. Leamas relished in such an open expression on his face. “You can’t take him down on your own-” the lecture stretched and stretched but Leamas tuned out for the briefest moment – this man –  _Walter –_ was close enough to Fiedler to  _know_ about Mundt. To be privy to Fiedler’s mad plan. How many others were there?

It was dizzying.

Fiedler was shaking his head, and Leamas refocused, knuckles white around the doorknob. “I am not by myself, old friend.”  _Old friend._

Walter scoffed. “Right. Right because a bloody imperial defector is better than no one, aye?”

Fiedler did not take kindly to poisonous sarcasm. Of all his responses, Leamas could never have expected - “I trust him.” His breath hitched, but blessedly neither of the men heard. “I trust Leamas to stand by me.”

“I didn’t realise you were in the habit of being so cavalier about that word."  _Neither did I._

“I’m not. Leamas is-” This time, Fiedler's frustration was not something Leamas needed to read from his hands.

“A liar. A defector. How do you know he isn’t lying to even now?”

Leamas’ vision blurred, and he futilely blinked away the moisture collecting around his lashes. The guilt which had slowly but incessantly culminated on his walk treacherously re-emerged with a vengeance.

“He wouldn’t.”  _Fuck._ Fielder sounded so certain. “I trust him, Walter.” He was all but pleading, in a soft voice Leamas had never heard before. 

“Just like you trusted Mundt?”

The words swiftly vacuumed the air from the room, leaving behind a razor-edge of tension. A pause.

“You are not to make that comparison again, Walter.”

 _This_ was a voice Leamas recognised, from the trembling script of Guillam’s men who had been left with tatters of their sanity for the Retrieval Team to collect. A voice that was a threat unto itself.

Walter realised the thin ice on which he tread, and cleverly retreated with haste. Something warm uncurled in Leamas’ stomach at the knowledge that he could incite such an emotion with Fiedler.  _Christ._

“I’m sorry.” 

Fiedler’s shoulders sagged noticeably. This was the turning point in a well-recited argument, Leamas knew it ended the same way every time.

“I’m sorry too, Walter. You are my greatest friend, and I am selfish. I know – I  _know_ it – but I must beg your support. That is all.” Walter stood briskly, and kneeled in front of Fiedler, his palms on the younger man’s knees in a frighteningly intimate gesture. “I do not need anything of you, only the knowledge that you believe me. That you support my endeavour. Please, Walter.”

The sigh crumbled Walter’s entire body against Fiedler, who only pooled the other man against his chest. Not for the first time, Leamas felt bitterly like an intruder.

“Of course,” Walter cleared his throat, visibly allowing the plea to ground him. “Of course, Jens. Always. I just worry about you.” He finished with a broken laugh, and the sadness in Fiedler’s eyes was paralysing. “Do you need me to do anything?”

“Never. Keep yourself safe, Walter, and stay very far away from me.”

But Walter was already shaking his head. “You’ll really be all alone, Jens.”

“I told you,” Fiedler smiled – another one for Leamas to keep filed away – “I am not alone.” His thin fingers slid up Walter’s cheek and pushed away a rogue lock of hair. There was nothing but brotherly love and comradery in the sweet gesture, and Leamas yearned for nothing more than to be in Walter’s place. In Fiedler's eyes he could see such warmth, shrouded in passionate intensity only awakened by love for another. “Keep yourself safe. Should anything happen, I could not live with myself knowing Mundt got his filthy hands on you.”

Even from here, Leamas could see the tear spots wetting Fiedler’s knee. Walter wiped uselessly at his eyes. “You really are selfish to ask this of me.”

“I do not trust anyone else to visit my mother, to bring her flowers.”

Leamas wanted to vanish. He’d seen too much. This wasn’t – he wasn’t –  _fuck. Fuck._ Fiedler with friends, and a mother, and sweet sweet Fiedler with comforting gestures and tears in his eyes. A man so removed from the barbarity of everything the wall stood for. A man who could love, who could  _be_ loved.

Leamas had been so blind.

“Well,” Walter finally stood, pulling Fiedler up by the hand, “we’ll be visiting her together. I’m still your  _guardian ad litem_ , remember? Still not a joke.” He pulled Fiedler into a hug, and Leamas closed his eyes, unwilling to intrude anymore. “I’ll see you on the other side Jens.”

He only opened his eyes after the distinctive  _thud_ of a closing door.

Springs creaked noisily, and Leamas imagined Fiedler collapsing into his bed, boneless body wrought with emotion.

“You may come out now, Leamas.”

 

Oh.

Well.


	8. H is for habeas corpus

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He looked at Leamas in a way only he could, conveying a love more precious than words could ever achieve. No, words would have gotten in the way. Who needs words, Leamas thought, when you have eyes like those?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is getting out of hand  
> moving on

_Meaning: may you have the body_

 

Fiedler shuffled across to one side of the bed, leaving the other half free for Leamas.

He blinked dumbly at the young man lying bonelessly on the mattress. But Fiedler only looked over Leamas' shoulder for a long, silent moment before haphazardly throwing his forearm over his eyes as if to beckon:  _come on then._

Leamas hesitated, before abandoning every thought and conclusion he'd hastily formed and toeing off his shoes. 

It should have felt  _wrong_  lying next to another man, next to Fiedler of all people. The bed was too small for the pair of them, but as the springs creaked obnoxiously under his weight and he forced his shoulders down by Fiedler's, it only felt strange. Not unpleasant. Fiedler let him have the bigger half of the duck-feather pillow without comment.

Leamas turned his head toward his companion, his nose brushing against tumbling locks of dark hair. Fiedler smelled like fresh linen and tobacco. With his arm thrown as it was, Leamas could only make out the resigned line of his lips and the barest hint of white skin leading to his cheek.  _What would you think if you saw me like this George,_ he thought, unblinking. Fiedler was warm and tired and so very human lounging beside his defector. 

So very vulnerable.

"Alec." Leamas startled. Fiedler's voice was rough, and he cleared his throat immediately. The slightest splash of pink coloured the pale lines of his neck. "Leamas," he quickly corrected.

"Alec's okay."

The thin arm dropped quickly, the other man's face no longer hidden. Little was hidden actually, in the rare moment threatening to slip into routine and facade. In Fiedler's eyes stirred a storm of confusion and hope woven together with a thread of anxiety, as if in hearing his confession to Walter Leamas would turn him away. 

But he won't. Leamas won't.

"Do you understand?"

The question was soft, a wretched whisper barely louder than the erratic beat of Fiedler's heart. Leamas heard it from where he lay, and it frightened him terribly because he wanted to press his ear against the hollow chest and _listen_. Just listen.

Fiedler was asking him for more than he had ever been prepared to give anyone.

There was a cowardly voice within him, pleading urgently:  _roll off the bed, leave in a storm, become enraged. George wants it - Control needs it - of you. Let things return as they should be._

But the unbridled hope cautiously blossoming on Fiedler's face choked the cowardly voice, suffocating Leamas' fears with dangerous ease. "No."

Before the shutters could fall determinedly, barring Leamas from the raw  _feeling_ within Fiedler, robbing him of the opportunity and dare he confess  _the privilege -_

"I'd like to. Jens, if you'll help me. I'd like to understand."  _You. Us. This beautiful and terrible thing between me and you. Jens._

_Jens._

The name felt so natural in his mouth, so welcome and used, as if it had been all he had ever called Fiedler. Familiarity felt unparalleled, and for the briefest moment Leamas could have been Walter, and he could have been  _more._

Fiedler laughed. It was quiet and broke with the hitch of his breath as a wet silvery line slipped down the side of his face. He looked at Leamas in a way only he could, conveying a love more precious than words could ever achieve. No, words would have gotten in the way.  _Who needs words,_ Leamas thought,  _when you have eyes like those?_

In a moment of utter indescribable madness Leamas wondered if Fiedler was going to kiss him. He hoped he would. 

But the other man was turned away, tilting his chin to face the ceiling, and the moment of madness withered quickly like a flare snuffed between two calloused thumbs. Fiedler did not look away to hide his tears, for he was not ashamed of them. It was a feminine expression of vulnerability any other man would have been wrongly abashed of, embarrassed of, but not Fiedler. Fiedler only looked content, as if some web deep within his soul had begun to untangle and the relief was so extraordinary it stole his voice and slid down his cheeks in silvery tears. 

In that moment, Leamas truly loved him.

It was all too overwhelming. He shifted as well, turning from Fiedler to face the ceiling. Shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip, they lay in silence, until -

"Was he the one who brought you the butter?" 

"Mmm," the other man replied, "Walter has always been shameless in his pampering."

"Did you grow up together?"

"I spent six weeks hiding from fascists in his basement." Leamas laughed, and it was wrong and serious, but Fiedler laughed along too, and the soon bed was creaking anxiously with their misplaced mirth. "This was his last futile attempt to remove me from my mission."

Leamas  _hmm'd_ knowingly. _Mission._ "He was really afraid."

"He will always be afraid for me. I believe you would call him a  _mother hen._ "

He snorted. "I see that. He compared me to Mundt."

Fiedler was quiet, his initial response to subconsciously curl his feet by Leamas'. With the conversation effectively stunted, the older man glanced at him, and he became thrilled by such a desperate hunger to  _know_ more, to  _devour_ all that Fiedler - Jens - would let him. For the first time he wished for more than mere fleeting glimpses to fuel his insomnia. He wanted to hold and feel and see Fiedler, and it took him tremendous effort not to cry in frustration when the German simply  _breathed_ without response.

"Leamas," not Alec,  _Leamas,_ safe territory. "The gusto and naivete with which I trusted Mundt is not misdirected towards you. You must not think it is. My trust in you has not always been unwavering. It has been uncertain, crude, and yes - shrouded in  _doubt."_ He turned ever so slightly to face Leamas, and there was a quick, near-invisible pull at his lips. "But in you, my dear Leamas, my trust has never been misplaced."

Leamas couldn't speak.  _Jens. Jens - Fiedler - if you knew. If only you knew -_

"I-" he swallowed painfully. 

 

_I'm lying to you._

_I'm lying to you._

_I’m lying to myself._

"I trust you too."

Fiedler looked into his eyes a moment longer, as if he could see all the ugliness Leamas fought so valiantly to hide, but he couldn't. He couldn't, because he smiled at Leamas with the same smile he imparted his dearest and oldest friend. 

"Thank you."  _Breathe,_ Leamas reminded himself. "That means a great deal to me."

He shrugged nonchalantly, and imitation of casualness so evidently forced. Fiedler was kind enough not to comment.

_I was a fool to think I could hate you._

Perhaps he had always known. Leamas sat up, bracing his arms against the mattress to hold himself steady. He counted backwards from ten, silently, shutting his eyes against the reality of the grave he had more than willingly dug for himself. There was darkness behind his eyelids, but he could still feel. The subtle warmth of Fiedler’s body against him, the wiry strength in the quiet curl of his long fingers, the deep faded scars on his white hands and brittle wrists that regaled only the barest wisp of a terrible life story.

Even now, he felt acutely Fiedler’s eyes on him. Reading him with the same intensity he’d imposed on One Thousand and One Nights, as if a beautiful foreign language had been carved into the skin of Leamas’ back.

Leamas let the other man trail his beautiful hands along the stiff muscles of his shoulders, index finger sliding to the protrusion of his elbow. He let Fiedler read a beautiful story in him, swallowing with great difficulty the bile bubbling at the base of his throat. _Walter hadn’t been so far from the truth, had he George?_

“What does it mean?”

“Hmm?” Fiedler sat up, crossing his legs as Leamas dangled his feet over the edge of the bed. He still drew careless absent-minded patterns along Leamas’ clothed arm, and the older man could have cried at the overwhelming sincerity in his touch.

“Guardian ad litem. What you told Walter, earlier.” He found a fascinating spot on the rug to undo with his stare, desperately itching to pull Fiedler hard against his chest, and desperately itching to yank his arm from those wonderful hands and _vanish._

“Oh,” the younger man seemed surprised. The expressiveness was a curtesy, and Leamas wondered how long it would last. Fiedler shifted to sit beside him, relinquishing his hold on the older man. Instead, he folded both hands in his lap with a forced stillness, as if he’d only just realised how heedlessly they’d been wondering. “It refers to a person appointed by a court of law to represent a child, most commonly in family law proceedings. A sort of independent lawyer prioritising only the child’s best interests.”

It was a textbook response recited with such emotional dexterity. Leamas could not look at Fiedler when he continued.

“It was a game between Walter and I when we were children. Every time I moved between homes he declared it a decision of the _guardian ad litem,_ so it became less… difficult.”

 _Oh._ Leamas had memorised every page of Fiedler’s negligible file, all the splintered bits and pieces of seemingly irrelevant information. It only made sense that a Jewish orphan in post-Nazi Germany would be palmed off into the system, shoved like a mayfly against ugly floral wallpaper to fade into obscurity. Mistakes like Jens Fiedler were traumatic, reminders of the agony humanity was capable of inflicting. No one wanted to look at the dirty consequences of an atrocity, let alone _care_ for it, even if it lived and breathed and had a name.

Fiedler did not seem privy to his thoughts, continuing “Even though guardians are generally assigned to very young children, Walter never hesitates to remind me that he is my _forever guardian._ He visited me in every home. Every single one.” 

“There were many?”

The German smiled sadly, and when Leamas saw _that_ smile, he could not look away. _Why didn’t he take you into his home? Why didn’t he take you with him? Why –_ but the anger had to simmer down quickly, because Fiedler revealed more than he ought to have, and Leamas heard and learned and cherished more than he ought to have too.

It was not his place. Not yet.

A painful clench in his stomach. He was not prepared for this.

Safe. It was time to retreat to safety, to normalcy. It was time to surrender _Jens_ and _Alec_ and little lovely lingering touches that meant the whole bloody world and then some.

“Were you taking me out to lunch?”

His question dissolved the quiet sombreness between them. It was a clever out leading to a renewed path of imperviousness, far removed from the defenceless exposition and raw fragility divulged in sweet touches and well-kept secrets.

Fiedler blinked, and Leamas allowed him a private minute to compose himself, to shield himself from his own vulnerability. It was painfully visible – Fiedler straightened his shoulders and lifted his chin and his sad little smile widened and grew teeth, and his eyes became sharper and the thin wet trail on his cheek was hidden by a messy mop of hair.

“Come along then,” there was something awfully English about the way mocking way Fiedler spoke. Standing, “Otherwise I will be forced to have lunch _habeas corpus._ ” He slipped into character with frightening ease, and Leamas was thankful.

In turn, he followed with a well-time groan, “Fuck’s sake, can you simmer down on the pretention for longer than a minute?”

“It means,” Fiedler continued without being asked, “without the body.” He pulled his jacket from where they’d creased it on the bed, straightening the sleeves warily before drawing it on. Leamas could not settle the fondness expanding in his ribcage as Fiedler pulled Leamas’ key from where he’d abandoned it on the dresser. “And next time you decide to eavesdrop, dear Leamas,” Leamas easily caught the key thrown his way, “do be more careful about it. Otherwise I may be engaging in more activities _habeas corpus._ ”

He rolled his eyes, stepping out in front of the younger man as he held the door open. “If this Latin thing is going to another one of your annoying habits-”

Fiedler locked the door, brandishing a distressed expression, “You wound me.”

Leamas knocked their shoulders together, playfully this time. “Fiedler, I swear-” 

“How else should I prepare you for the _spelling test_? I do hope your Latin is better than your German.” He received and answering elbow to the ribs, and fixed Leamas with such an exhilarating look. Leamas could have been the sun, and Fiedler a lone planet drawn to orbit him forever.

This was what it felt like. To be trusted by a man like Fiedler. Brilliant. Incomparably indescribably _brilliant._

Oh. _Leamas you fool._

That’s how it would end then.

_I’ll do it. I’ll tell him. I have to._

_I have to tell him._

_Forgive me George._


	9. I is for in re

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Meaning: in the matter of

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> when plot accidentally slips into the filler

_Meaning: In the matter of_

"I fucked up. I-"

"Give me two days."

"Okay. Okay.”

"...Keep your head, Alec."

* 

He found Fiedler at the nearby cafe they had commandeered into an unofficial recon zone.

One long finger traced the wide rim of the mug absentmindedly. His other hand was a fist beneath his chin, arm held up straight by an elbow bent, creasing the edge of his newspaper.

"Good morning," he murmured pleasantly as Leamas approached, keeping his head down. Leamas pulled out the chair opposite, snatching deftly the menu perched between them.

"I'm famished," he skimmed small type-script with squinted eyes. He'd already memorised the bloody thing, but it busied his eyes so he was less tempted to look over at the young face in front of him, features twisted in studied focus.

Eggs. Eggs cooked this way, eggs cooked that way. Eggs with bacon, eggs with sausages, eggs with bacon  _and_ sausages in  _our new haus special!_ Fuck, he thought grimly, the yanks really were invading.

When the waitress trotted over, a fresh cup was balanced in one hand and a tilting jug of steaming coffee was balanced in the other. 

"Are you ready to order?"

"Scones, please. Extra jam if you would." Leamas didn't miss Fiedler's bemused little smile, half-hidden by his newspaper. 

"I'll have the strudel."

"Cream?"

"Please."

As she tucked her pen into her apron, "Thank you kindly." 

Fiedler folded his newspaper shut as she walked away, and Leamas did his honest best in preparation of what he was about to say. 

Very gently, very firmly, he tugged at the strings which held his mask, and manoeuvred it willingly over his brow and down his chest, right to the careless bend of his knee and the curl of his toes. A charming smile, relaxed lazy eyes and a wondering touch very subtly mimicking the swipe of Fiedler's index finger around his mug. He let his shoulders droop minutely and crossed his fingers beneath the white-cloth table.

"Could we stay in Berlin a little longer?"

He tweaked his voice into text-book perfect uncertainty, strings of a violin perfectly tuned before the opening act.  _You are good at this._ With his lilting words he asked for time to appreciate the Berlin Fiedler lived, with his hopefully tilted chin he asked for an extra stretch of freedom, with the easy graze of his teeth against his lip he became nervous out of habit.  _This is who you are._

_This is who you're pretending to be._

Fiedler's finger stilled, and there was honest regret on his face when he replied.  _At least he's buying it,_ Leamas thought bitterly. 

"I am sorry Leamas, we have already stayed longer than we ought to have..." There was no lie. Berlin had stretched from one night to three, and the trial was a looming cloud darkening any hope of blue leisure. But Leamas forced himself to press, casually as he could,

"I know- I just-" he looked away, as if embarrassed. The waitress re-emerged not a moment too soon, sliding chipped ceramic plates with sugary pastries beside their coffee. Her presence gave his eyes an excuse to drift deliberately, in readiness for his hasty and regretful retreat: "I know. I shouldn't ask. Sorry."

He hid his mouth behind the rim of his mug, the slightest frown palpable from the momentary scrunch of his eyebrow and the fleeting swallow in his throat. Just as Fiedler noticed, Leamas focused on crumbling the scone incessantly with the twines of his fork, measuring every move with minute precision. His shoulders stooped visibly only if you were looking for the despondence, and he knew Fiedler was. 

"... I suppose an extra night could not hurt."

_Got you._

Leamas was surprised at how easily he pried permission from Fiedler's lips, and his mouth stretched into his cheeriest and falsest smile. He hated how Fiedler gave in without question, as if Leamas was above a well-manufactured façade.

 _Oh. What am I doing?_ Exploiting the confidence he'd unlocked behind those bewitching eyes, he played on Fiedler's misplaced love for him with a heavy heart. 

Not so long ago he fantasised pressing his arms into those slim shoulders, forcing Fiedler hard against the wall and forcing him to  _see_ , to see through the veil of carefully manicured lies and into the filthy soul of the man who had been lying to him.

And now...

"Are you alright?" He startled from his thoughts. There was no suspicion lurking beneath the question. A drizzle of cream was beginning to clot on Fiedler’s spoon.

_I'm devastated._

"Yes. Thank you, Jens."

*

Later that night, when Leamas lay wide-awake in the cramped hotel bed, the world began to spin. His tumble from the vivid euphoria of walking side by side with Fiedler, teasing an unused smile from his mouth, was steep and hurried. 

He glanced at the sleeping figure across the valley of the little room. Fiedler was turned toward the wall, gracing Leamas with the delightful arc of his shoulders through a thin cotton t-shirt. The closeness and familiarity were as transient as a divided Berlin. It wouldn't last. 

How could it? Fiedler with all his lazy smiles and silly pyjamas and the childish way his morning yawn scrunched up his face and turned his eyes into little crescents. For an unbearably inane second, his mind unhelpfully supplied a title for his troubles: _In re Fiedler._ In the matter of Fiedler.

Not an apt moment for dry English humour, he thought miserably, but could not suffocate the burgeoning realisation that his entire mission had twisted around one man in so many different ways. The rope he’d knotted around Fiedler’s wrists to lead him like cattle to grass had fallen undone with propositions of dinner and card games. But it no longer lay at their feet helplessly. It felt sinister now. As the trial crept and crept closer from beneath the shadows, Leamas felt like he was slowly knotting the rope into an executioner’s noose around Fiedler’s white neck. No longer cattle to grass, but a lamb to the slaughter.

He let his head sink further into the pillow, watching the still world move with one eye. A persistent glory haunted the past two days. Every moment their relationship developed and ran like spider-cracks on a mirror, Leamas felt distressingly accomplished. George Smiley was no longer his only friend, no longer than the only man he could love.

He pushed his palms into the hollows of his eyes.  _God._ It was wrong to cherish these moment as he had been, because they were little more than pretence.

Weren't they?

Not the trust or the honesty or the way both he and Fiedler naively bared their souls. Not  _them._ The pretence was around them, in the lies they told to others, the lies they lived.

In the lie  _he_ lived.

So far as Leamas was concerned, Fiedler hadn't lied to him. 

_Fuck._

He had to stop staring at those shoulders. To stop memorising every perfect line of Fiedler's carefully sculpted body.

Anyway, Leamas figured, the last thing he'd see would be his friend's retreating back as the walls came down around them.

He dropped his feet against the plush rug and grabbed his trousers.

*

The pub was a dingy little nook tucked at the end of a winding path of wet pavements that made one part of Berlin so indistinguishable from the next. The sky had bled from grey to black, but as hard as he squinted, Leamas could scarce make out a single star pinned between the dirty cotton clouds.

Across the bar, a pretty young thing made heart eyes at him. Strawberry blond, ocean blue eyes. The curves of her body were soft and supple, her mouth plump with wine, and she was all wrong. 

From the wrap of her lips around the straw, Leamas knew how high and lady-like her voice would be, broken by loose giggles when he ran his knuckles across her bare thigh. The thought of her naked body beneath him churned his stomach all wrong, and Leamas could have knocked his head hard against the bar top. 

He yearned for the hollow dip of narrow hips and a deep sly voice and a hard-pale mouth against his skin. 

But he  _couldn't -_ he couldn't. So Leamas took a deep, grounding breath and made love to his whiskey instead. A huff of unsubtle disbelief brought him back.

"I didn't plan for any of this." He re-shifted his focus to the miserable scenery outside the dirty glass window. "I didn't, George, you have to believe that at least."

Perched on a similarly whiny stool, his companion swallowed his voice with another gulp of dry steinhager. The silence Smiley kept was one Leamas was all too familiar with. He could only roll the weak justifications on his tongue and tease out his own silence until his oldest friend saw fit to reply.

It took three drinks and a cracked porcelain bowl of salted peanuts, but soon enough Smiley was rolling his soldiers and puffing his chest against the wooden edge of the table.

"Alec."

That clever tongue darted in and out quickly, in search of the perfect and painfully elusive words.

He waited. Smiley began again.

"Alec. Don't cock this up."

His eyes flickered from the window to his empty tumbler.

"That isn't what I'm doing." He kept his words firm and his sentence trim, but his friend was never obliging when he ought to have been.

"That's precisely what you're doing, old friend." The room for anger was contained. "Alec. I love you, man. I need you to come back from this. You need to come back from this, do you understand that?"

"I don't have a death wish, George, if that's what you're insinuating."

The older man rolled his eyes, and Leamas felt the way his words chiselled a crack between them. The radio on the bar top stuttered angrily before static buried the tinkling piano keys. "You're so close, man. Keep your mouth shut and finish the mission."

Leamas blinked.

"What aren't you telling me?"

Smiley pushed away from the table with his short legs, planting both feet solidly on the floorboards. Alright.

"That's it then?"

Without reply, Smiley adjusted the heavy coat he'd never edged from his shoulders. Leamas' incredulity made him suddenly restless. "For fuck's sake, George, at least look at me!"

So he did. Sliding around the table, Smiley fisted his strong scarred hands in Leamas' shirt. "Can't you see I'm trying to save your life?"

"He won't abandon me. I'm not in danger here, George!"

There was a sudden hush around the pub. Momentary, but dangerous in its intransience all the same. The blond had disappeared. His friend hesitated not a moment in pushing him along and out the door, into the cold wet night.

"He's playing you, Alec.” His voice was tuned to little more than a whisper, but he could have been yelling. “That's what he does. You know this, Christ, you saw Peter's man, you know what Fiedler is capable of. He's tying you up in knots and you're too blind to even see it!" Leamas felt his fury shrivel the tears in his eyes, but he could still taste salt on his tongue through the pattering rain.

"You're wrong."

"He's a psychological con artist, Alec." Smiley finally let go. "Can't you see all the holes in your story? An emotional confession - how could that possibly have been real when he knew you'd been listening the entire time? And _Walter –_ a man with only a first name and no record I could find _anywhere._ Cooking dinner together and that bloody butter- preying on your home sickness and emotional fragility with reminders of London. Talk of _intimacy,_ card games, walks, feeding the ducks-" Smiley's voice trembled into a terrible plea Leamas would never forget- "why can't you see what he's doing, Alec? Why can't you-"

He stumbled.

 _Now do you see,_ he could have whispered back. A terrible hush fell between them for a fleeting moment.

Smiley's mouth opened and closed and opened again, comically like a fish out of water, as he grappled with a most frightening realisation.

"Oh, old friend."

Leamas said nothing. He wiped the rain from his face with his hand and swallowed the surging scream back into his lungs.

"Yeah," he replied lamely instead. "Yeah."

Smiley had an abysmal look about him, with the colour having seeped from his face and his eyes wide and afraid. It took him longer than a moment to regain his composure, pushing his back straight and hard against the rain as if his shoulders were suddenly far too heavy to bear.

"Okay." The rain pattered onto the pavement with growing fervour. Smiley seemed to come to an unchallengeable conclusion. "Okay."

"George?" He whispered into the dark. The older man hobbled backwards into an ally, and Leamas blindly followed. "George, please, would you just-"

"This sinister thing was doomed from the beginning," he muttered quickly and surely. The change in mood Leamas found baffling. "Alec, you have to leave. Urgently. Come back to London with me, you must."

"For crying out loud George, haven't you been listening to a thing I've said?" _What aren’t you telling me? What aren’t you telling me, George?_

"I've been listening," and for the first time in years he could hear clearly the whine of George's desperation, "and I think you've said quite enough. Come back London, Alec. You won't be able to return later, believe me. Please."

The exhaustion was as heavy as the winter rain, and his knees might have given in had George not caught him. "I won't leave him. I can't."

"Then you'll be doomed with him." The soft-spoken words would keep him up night after night after night, Leamas knew.

So be it.

"Alright. Alright." His resignation was palpable, and he hugged Smiley for the briefest moment with all his might. The rain washed upon him a disturbing catharsis, as he finally grappled the truth in his very own words.

_You won’t be able to return -_

_I won’t leave him._

“Alec, _please-_ ”

"I forgive you," Leamas whispered into his friends’ ear, before letting go and fading into the black, slinking away to leave Smiley wiping salt and water from his face with a terrible and tortured cry.


End file.
